Sibling’s secret wedding

[IsitanIssue]

Name change for obvious reasons.

Without being too outing, keeping it short as need opinions!

I got engaged, booked the venue, sent out save the dates to our guests. After sending out the save the dates, my sibling became engaged and booked their wedding to take place abroad 2 months after mine.

To avoid drip feeding: This is my first marriage. It is my sibling’s second marriage.* They left their first marriage after having an affair. It’s been less than 5 years since they got married the first time.

We did not go to my sibling’s wedding because it was a few months after ours and on the other side of the world. Unsurprisingly, we were broke after our wedding and did not have time to plan financially to go on their holiday of a lifetime so soon after our own celebrations. Clearly, relations were strained. This has created a HUGE rift in the family, and this sibling shouted at me several times and family members have been furious with us for not attending their wedding.

TWIST: It now turns out that my sibling secretly got married LOCALLY just days before our own wedding. So when we did not go abroad a few months later, we actually did not miss their legal marriage, as this was secretly attended locally to us with parents there. No one else seems to know the wedding abroad was not the legal wedding. Now legally, there was no need to get married in advance locally, as the wedding abroad would have been entirely legal and they are residents there.

AIBU- No reason to feel annoyed, and they are right to resent you.

YANBU- They hid important information about the wedding when shouting at you. That’s annoying.

*They have since broken up!

If you (understandably) couldn’t afford a destination wedding just after your why is it so heated? What were people expecting you to do, get a loan?

That’s a really good question. We had a big wedding so maybe they thought we had loads of money. Jokes on them: we’re just inept financially 😂

"DB, if you can't afford to fly to the other side of the world for a wedding, you can't afford it. We couldn't afford it and therefore we couldn't go. And to be honest, if we had scraped together every last penny to fly to the other side of the world and then (a) we later discovered that you had a legal wedding at home which we weren't invited to, and (b) you subsequently split up, we would have really regretted spending that money. So it's a good thing we didn't. Now please drop it because there's absolutely nothing anyone can do about it anyway."

What relationship do these family members have to you? It sounds like they're neither your brother nor your parents, in which case why are they so personally invested in this? Did they perhaps get into financial difficulties to attend this wedding and are feeling bitter that you used your words and said no?

So it's not even that your sibling getting married shouted at you for not going? It's because other family members who for some reason conducted a 'heated debate' about you not attending the overseas wedding would have been less 'heated' had they known the legal wedding had already taken place?

Surely that's on these other family members for pitching a fit about a non-event, not on your sibling and the person they were marrying?

I mean, are you all terribly hot-tempered, liable to hold grudges, and involved in one another's business or something? It just sounds a bit mad, all this 'heated debate' about someone else's wedding.

You also do sound slightly as if you're determined to make this your sibling's fault, with all that extra information about it being their second marriage, the result of an affair, and that their previous wedding had been less than five years earlier, and it being your first marriage. Look, you declined to go to your sibling's wedding, whether it's because you couldn't afford to or just didn't want to. Own that.

I don’t think it matters that they got legally married locally, they considered their abroad wedding the proper one.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable you couldn’t attend for financial reasons. Did anyone try to help make it possible for you to attend?

I find it quite grim that you’ve basically written that your wedding was the more important one because it was your siblings second marriage. It obviously didn’t diminish how important it was for them, and I’d have shouted at you too if you made me feel like you wouldn’t attend my wedding because my first marriage didn’t work out.

The context that they have since split up is relevant though, isn't it? I hate to think how much money all these family members spent flying to the other side of the world to attend this wedding when the marriage was so short lived. If I were the OP I certainly wouldn't be spending a lot of money to attend his third wedding.

Also, just to add- the ‘secret’ legal wedding isn’t the issue

Hmm, the title of your thread suggests otherwise.....

Hi OP. I think the UK marriage is a bit of a red herring. There are lots of couples who get married abroad who would undertake a UK wedding here first- it prevents any of a number of legal issues emerging later. I think it is generally accepted that if a wedding takes place abroad then there will be some people- even close ones who simply cannot go due to cost, health, time of work and other issues. So I think not going was ok. However, I have also heard some people planning an overseas wedding where the bride has added- and these will tell us who are true friends are- which is just wrong in my head. I think just distance yourself?

You mention they were residents of the other country. Does that mean they lived there at the time of the wedding or just that they had citize ship? If the former or if a significant portion of family lived there, I would not count it as a destination wedding. It would simply be getting married where they live or in their hometown.

we went and had our wedding ceremony in our hometown. It was easier for us to travel than more of our relatives. We got legally married where we actually live because it was simpler and saved on travel days. We didn’t tell anyone because it wasn’t relevant. The spiritual celebration with friends and family is not that closely linked to signing a document in a government office.

if your sibling had a wedding where they live as opposed to a destination wedding, I’m not surprised by the rift. The end result is the same, you need to travel, but only one is done out of pure self-interest. Sometimes you just have to make an effort and figure out a way to be there.

They could have invited their UK based family to the legal wedding though, rather than give them the option of spending thousands to attend the abroad wedding or missing out on all of it.

Your sibling is feeling sensitive and defensive because it is a second marriage and the first one ended quickly due to an affair. They interpreted your non-attendance as judgment.

So I think YANBU and can ignore their drama. If they cared about you being there, they'd have invited you to the local wedding.

What a pair of dicks. No idea why your wider family are endorsing their nonsense. You'll have the last laugh when it fails.

Sometimes you just can't figure out a way to be there if it will cost thousands of pounds that you don't have.

And frankly, thank goodness they didn't say, "fuck it" and whack it on a credit card, because it sounds like they'd still have been paying for it after the not so happy couple had split up.

Sorry if it wasn’t clear- when you say ‘it’s not even that your sibling getting married shouted at you for not going? It's because other family members’ that’s incorrect. My sibling is still triggered by it and will shout at me all over again if the topic comes up.

At the time they told family how upset they were and members tried to get us to change our minds and/or were cold towards us.

I knew it was dicey to include my siblings marital background, but I really didn’t want to get accused of drip feeding because it would sound worse to say it later (maybe).

We 100% own it. It’s pretty hard to hide considering people were so upset by it!!

It already has failed!

What's done is done. Let it all blow over now, and in time the other relatives will realise that they have been unreasonable towards you.

As for your sibling - well just keep as far away from them as possible.

"It already has failed!"

Missed that bit but am unsurprised. Even more reason to celebrate not going to their fancy abroad wedding that was fake and also ultimately failed.

Wait, so your brother is still giving you a hard time for not getting into financial difficulties to fly to the other side of the world and watch him marry a woman he is now divorced from (and had, in any event, secretly married close to where you live beforehand, without inviting you)?

this is why me and my DH went off and just got married! when we got engaged we were so fed up of family telling us what we could and could not do.. all the adults kids wanted new outfits for them AND their partners, we were given a date by one sister as that was the only date she was available.. we had the whole 'i'm not going is so and so is going' and the 'you'd better not sit us next to so and so'... in the end we just upp'ed and got married.

i do regret some of it.. some of my own family refuse to speak to me still (11 years on) because they didn't get THEIR wedding invite!!

It's mind boggling to me that your sibling is niggling about you not attending their wedding abroad when they are now divorced. Do they have nothing else to talk about ?

Its an invite not a summons, nobody 'has' to attend a wedding.

If the wedding is the 'legal' signing of papers or not does not matter one jot.

Stop being so judgemental and trying to 'cheapen' their day as 'lesser than' yours to justify your lack of attendance to yourself.

You didn't go... its done, doesn't really matter and won't change but trying to drag them down certainly won't make you come out on top.

😂Well aware how dramatic it sounds but if not on Mumsnet where else?

I’ll level with you - I hate abroad weddings because there is so much expense that people expect from their guests. I’d be really annoyed if I’d spent it and then the whole thing broke down straight away. But the OP seems to be using the fact that it was a second marriage to help prop up her argument to not go (well in advance of any split unless OP can see into the future).

I just think that if my sibling had implied in any way that my wedding wasn’t worthy of as much effort because it wasn’t my first marriage, I would be pretty upset.

That’s really heartbreaking to read. I really hope they didn’t feel this way as it’s not at all what we intended. Thank you for sharing this. I genuinely didn’t think I’d written or implied our wedding was more important. I think ever wedding is equal no matter what.

Well, you can learn from your awful behaviour and not make the same mistake again when you are invited to their next wedding.

Then you can say you've been to the majority of their weddings, or that two out of three isn't bad, etc etc.